Music Education #2 Finding a Teacher

Finding the right teacher for your child is probably the most influential choice that you will make in your child’s musical development. You want an experienced, talented and qualified teacher whose personality is good match for your child. Then you need to make a decision on three points: 1 how far you are willing to drive, 2. how much you are willing to spend, and 3. what kind of expectations do you have of your child and of the teacher.

The first two points of your decision depend on the teacher: as a teenager taking violin lessons, I drove weekly an hour each way and paid more than we had ever paid for lessons, but what I got out of it was incredible. Some teachers may be very close by, or be very cheap, but do not seem to have musical students. Convenience may not be your best option, however it can be a blessing! During my formative years we were very privileged to practically be neighbors with one of the best teachers in the state. Based on these first two points, you can begin your search.

To get names and contact information of teachers in your area, contact music teacher associations, piano stores, Universities, Music Schools, Music stores, churches, friends who have lived in the area for years and internet teacher referral lines. When first talking with a teacher on the phone, you will likely be offered a chance for an interview. Take this opportunity to get to know all the teachers with availability in their schedules around your area. If you believe your child has a real gift and you have a teacher in mind that you had hopes to study with who professes to be full, or says your child is too young, etc. you could try to ask for an interview with the view that the teacher may offer you advice and direction. Expect that teachers may ask for an interview fee, this is normal. (Just a tip: as a teacher I don’t like to be asked “Can I sit through another student’s lesson?” because students pay for private lessons and that is not fair to that student to have a stranger watch their lesson. A teacher's credentials and presentation at the interview should have enough strength to inspire confidence in a prospective client.)

The last point, what kind of expectations do you have of your child and of the teacher may influence your decision once you have had your first meeting. Teachers may require much work from the students, or very little practice, and you may prefer this... or not. (Keep in mind that piano lessons done well equals a huge amount of work for everybody involved. And no, hard work isn't bad! :) ) A very good guideline of questions you can ask potential teachers can be found on the page of the MTNA website that I have linked here: "Finding a teacher" tips.

This will also make you turn to the questions for yourself: Why piano lesson? Do you want to have some music lessons sprinkled over your children's heads? Do you want them to be little Mozarts? Do you want them to work hard and get great at playing the piano, but still do it just for fun? Are you looking for Music Therapy, or Discpline and Competition, or Professional Concert Pianist training? Do the children really want to play? (Most children really do!) Or is it you who actually wants to play? The teacher may ask you some questions like these.

There is something so amazing about hearing someone play the piano really well. It does something to the performer and the audience alike, and we wish we could be more deeply and closely involved in the music making process. I think that is why we seek lessons, to become that musician enjoying it up there on stage, or to give someone we love the ability to become that musician. Music is the sounds of our feelings, and we like to hear our feelings in our ears, and to feel the beauty of music affecting us like that. To be the musician, we also have the power to affect others that way. That's fun. (We also like the applause.)

But the best part of lessons is having music happen in your house every day, and enriching your whole family tree by taking part in active music making. Because when your children become parents, they will want to pass on the legacy by either teaching their own little ones, or getting them lessons as one cherished former student Roya wrote to me; "I hope you'll still be teaching when I have my own kids because I'll definitely be taking them to you for piano lessons!"

Musicians are Peculiar #1

Beethoven wrote five piano concertos, and the one that tops my list of favorites is number four.

I used to dislike the second movement, but it grew on me, and still does.

The following is an interesting introduction to the movement. I chuckled over one person who commented something like, "I really like to listen to Lang Lang, but I have to put a bag over his head first." That makes me wonder -how uncomfortable are we watching up close someone who has complete freedom in expressing his own Transcendental Weirdness? Is he convincing? Or is he a clown? He seems to walk the line between the two!

Lang Lang talks about Beethoven Concerto No. 4.

By the way, when Lang Lang is telling a story when talking about the second movement, he is referring to classic tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, which, if you are a musician, you'll see that it pops up once in a while. (If you avoid myths with gods and goddesses, skip it.)

It’s Not That Bad, Sergei

Rachmaninoff suffered bouts of abysmal depression and was haunted with feelings of insecurity. Often he thought his music was just junk. He was so busy trying to be a conductor, pianist and composer and teacher all at once: No wonder he felt inadequate- he was trying to fill a large order. OK, so I am not a conductor (yet,) but I can only say, knowing a tiny bit about the other occupations, I’d say if he also were trying to be a homeschool mom/home-keeper/piano mom for a week, surely he would have whistled his way to work thereafter. (Bet he didn’t bake, either.)

Inventor Discovers his Invention is Already Invented

One of the funniest things that ever happened to me when I was teaching a piano lesson was a couple of years ago when Hayden as a dreamy, inventive ten year old said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if somebody made a piano that had a machine on it, that you could put in a disk and punch a button then it would play by itself, and the keys would go down with every note that would play?” I was incredulous at my good fortune. “You mean like this?” I turned a machine under my piano on, pushed in a disk, punched a button, the piano started to play itself and the keys went down with every note that played. Hayden’s expression at my response to his far-out imaginative flight was elevating! I don’t usually find myself laughing at students, but this was too much for me, and he was too astonished to laugh with me at first!

Prolific Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti was a famous Baroque harpsichordist (born in 1685: the same year as J.S. Bach and Handel!) who is famous for his five hundred fifty-five keyboard Sonatas. They are knows for their virtuosity and their sparkling energy. One of their particular technical demands is frequent hand crossovers which he employed liberally (…until his increasingly ample girth prevented him in old age.) Scarlatti is so distinctive. He was an Italian living in Spain and Portugal, working for the nobility there. That’s a lot of energetic musical culture wrapped up into one guy! I have found that his music doesn’t play too well on a lot of upright pianos because of brilliant repeating notes. Grand pianos have gravity to help get that hammer back down in position to spring back fast enough, not like uprights, whose hammers travel horizontally. Scarlatti’s repeated notes are always obvious, as in his Sonata in D minor, K. 141 (see this unbelievable version by Martha Argerich) Other things that happen often in Scarlatti’s music are sudden key changes to the parallel major or minor (like jumping from D major to D minor without a modulation) and those famous trills that often happen at the end notes of the two halves of the Sonatas.

Talkies Not In Yet

Heitor Villa-Lobos, (1887-1959: Brazilian pianist and composer) had a job playing the organ in a silent movie theater.

My husband’s grandfather remembered the silent movies first coming to his village in Belgium: This guy named Bucsan had the first reel in town set up in a room full of chairs. It was a western flick with no plot: a recycled affair of cowboys and Indians galloping in circles around a spinney of trees, put on repeat. Bucsan, poor man, was the proud owner of this new form of entertainment, and the ready-to-be-entertained public expected him to fill his shoes completely by narrating in detail the full of the drama. Bucsan delivered… at first. Then, as the Indians disappeared around the same corner for the sixth time and the repeatedly revived cowboys held their guns ready to shoot the (same) Indians dead for the seventh time, Bucsan wavered. The townspeople demanded he keep up with the story, but he was having a hard time maintaining his personal sense of drama and his imagination flagged. Finally things got ugly. “Bucsan, you lazy lout!!” they shouted. (That saying has since become a family proverb.)

That digression having been consummated, I will say, that Villa-Lobos’s job description would have included inventing dramatic music for the silver screen (or was it still brown?).